Work Text
The trouble with being in love is that it only ever ends in heartbreak. Whether you end up living out the rest of your life like a couple of idiots in a field of flowers and watch one another die or you break up over one of life's trivialities, love always ends in heartbreak. It was something Dean Winchester had tried to tell everyone who told him to look for the apple pie life; wife, kids, house on a hill. For some reason, it never registered with them because they didn't see what could be so bad as living out a happy life and then dying with the person they love the most. Dean's seen enough people he loves die for more than one lifetime."Dean, are you okay?" Sammy was always asking that damned question like he was ever going to get a different answer. Maybe the kid's gone crazy. Doing the same thing and expecting a different result."Peachy, Sammy." Dean grabbed the leather jacket hanging from the back of the motel chair and the keys to the room. Checkout was in thirty and he wasn't sticking around to pay for the next day because his brother was worried about his mental health.When he stretched to slide the jacket on, it reminded him of his previous train of thought. The stretch of burned skin that would forever remind people that he'd been broken, too.You see, that was the trouble with being in love with a Hunter. You always die. Whether you die at the hands of a skinwalker or a demon, Hunters don't get happy endings. They don't get the easy lives that just kind of come together in the end.He was paused - as it seemed to be happening often that he would pause when he stretched his arms a certain way or heard something that would surprise him - and Sammy was watching, but he could only afford the moment that he had already stalled in forward movement or his brother would be asking that stupid question again.Sometimes, like just then, he'd smell something that made no sense in the context and whip around to check, just to make sure, because ozone came with angels. Was that rainwater? Or the truly unique smell that only came with... No. If Dean thought his name, he'd think of the last time he'd heard the name and what had happened.He was walking toward the main office and ignored the faint scent of ozone trailing him, hoping against hope that it would either go away or bring back the one he lost too soon to say the words like he meant them. The bell above the door was obnoxiously close to the sound of a laugh, haunting him as he tossed the keys onto the counter between himself and the clerk that had almost received the brunt of his anger the day before."Well, don't you two look like shit." His fists clenched again at the words that reverberated in his mind.
You would look like shit, too. You just didn't know... You never knew Cas like I knew him.
Like floodgates being opened, images danced in his mind like they meant to tear him apart. Cas, staring at him for the first time with that otherworldly posture and tone. Saying with a bit of frustration that he couldn't join in on a joke because "I don't understand that reference, Dean." Beating him to a pulp because he gave up everything... for Dean.His smile while eating White Castle burgers during the period when he was a little wackadoo. When he came home, to the Bunker, with the Winchesters and insisted on becoming a Hunter despite being a human. Telling the Winchesters he didn't want to stop hunting after he found his Grace. His friendship with Charlie over the Book of the Damned because Charlie was interested in the weirdest stuff and now she'd gotten herself into a mess with the Stynes.Then, his mind's last ditch effort to tear out what remained of Dean Winchester's bruised and beaten heart, Castiel's body lying in the floor of the motel room, Eldon Styne's name on Cas' lips when Dean asked who'd done it. The eerie smile that overcame his features before the last three words of his whole existence burned more than the scars of his wings across Dean's torso could.I love you.He could feel his rage piling up again, the need to hold Eldon Styne's heart in his hand after what had happened winning over anything else he could feel. He was turning again, leaving the clerk to check them out without a word. The bell tore at his insides again, reminding Dean of a simpler time. A time when he could actually feel his internal organs instead of the vast hollowness that filled his insides.The Impala was hot, the humidity of Louisiana creeping into every crevice and damning anyone who tried to get comfortable in the leather interior. Sam was already sitting in the passenger seat, looking a little worried at Dean's appearance for whatever reason. He realized soon enough what it was, the tear track that had come somewhere between leaving the motel's front office and sitting in the car without his knowledge or permission.It was gone quickly enough for him to forget, but apparently not for his brother, who looked at him like he was a bomb set to detonate in the next minute.xXxThat concerned look was plastered to the side of his face until he was pulling out to a dirt road where he and Sam were going to change into the FBI getups they had invested in recently. Work as a fake badge often enough and you get tired of itchy rentals.Thinking of the rentals brings him back to remembering Cas - not matter how hard he wants to, he can't make himself stop thinking of the man. This time, he's in a suit and flirting with Dean, the older Winchester returning the favor with the light conversation to leave a nice scent in the air. Then, thinking of it, it may have been Cas that Dean had been smelling in the air as they spoke over dinner with Sam.It didn't matter either way, he was thinking of all the times he could have told Cas something that he'd been thinking before. When he had a pen stuck between his teeth, eyebrows pulled together and Dean had wanted to tell him he looked cute like that. When he'd woken up and forgotten to put a shirt on before padding to the kitchen for coffee and Dean had wanted to tell him he should do it more often. All the times since the beginning that Dean had wanted to make a comment, but realized what it would mean if he did. He did this until they were sitting outside of the Shreveport Police Department, ready to act their parts."We need to speak with the sheriff." The words don't sound strained coming out of his mouth nor does it sound like he hasn't used his voice in over an hour, but that may be his anger showing through the heartbreak he can hardly accept."Yes, may I have your names?" She seemed sweet enough, but Dean couldn't make himself be nicer toward the second clerk he's dealing with in as many hours. He couldn't really even make himself nice toward Sam."Agent Anderson and my partner, Agent Bourne." He pulled out his badge, knowing Sam had caught on to the drill after this many years to do the same."Oh, y'all follow me." She's too chipper and it made the underside of his skin itch, but he followed behind the desk and through the office silently until she was knocking on a door with Sheriff Landels written on a small name plate at about eye level. The door took a minute and a half to open, revealing a man with beady eyes and only a small patch of white hair left on the top of his head."What's th' meaning a this, Shirley?" He looked between the three, pulling the door a little further open and shuffling out of the way so the group can make their way in."Well, Cletus, these boys are from the Bureau and wanna talk to you." She ushered the Winchesters in ahead of herself and smiled to happily for Dean's crabby mood. If it weren't for the facade, he may have snapped at her annoying cheer. "I'm gonna go back to my post, but you boys let me know if you need water or anything." She only hovered for a moment, reaching out to grab the aluminum knob and pull the door closed when she was certain that neither wanted anything."How can I help you, gentlemen?" He's taking a generous gulp of coffee, steam reaching up to caress his face in a way that made Dean squash down the memories of Cas sipping coffee from a cheap ceramic mug in their kitchen."We have a lead in an expressly confidential case, but can't seem to locate the address of the indivuals of whom we are interested in." Dean takes a seat across the desk from where the sheriff has moved behind an ancient computer, doing his best to remain unattached to the situation. "Styne. S-T-Y-N-E. We need every form of communication you have documented as well as their addresses.""We have an Eldon, a Monroe, a Roscoe, an Eli, and a Jacob." He lists them nonchalantly, looking back over to Dean before he continues. "Which one is it you're interested in?""All of them." The sharp intake of breath from his brother is quiet enough for Dean not to be worried that the man on the other side of the desk hasn't heard it, but knows from experience that if Sam doesn't get a handle on it the Sheriff will suspect something at the sight of the Winchester bitchface."Alright, they'll be printing and heading for the front desk. Any more I can help you two with?" Honestly, Dean was surprised by the lack of wait time and/or fight to get the information he needed and shook his head slowly, waiting for the other shoe with a clenched jaw. "Okay, then best be on your way. Daylight's a-wastin'." There's a glint in his eye that makes Dean feel deja-vu for a moment, but he silently retreats with Sam and makes his way back to the front desk."Alrighty, boys. Y'all come back if there's anything else we can do." She looks pointedly at Sam, smiling perversely in a way that most of the look at him."Yeah, will do." Sam is taking the information out of her hands, smiling politely in his usual no-thanks manner. Any other day, Dean would have wondered why the kid's dick hasn't fallen off, yet.They're opening the doors to the Impala before either of them say anything and Sam is the one lucky enough to get to break the tension. "We can't kill all of them, Dean.""We'll die trying, then." The alarming part - to both of them, really - is that he meant it. He would go down fighting before backing off from this right now."Dean, we can't take them." He sounds desperate, almost pleading as the sun starts to dip toward the horizon and Dean takes a look at the addresses. All the same. Perfect."Listen, you can hang back if you want, but I'm going in. Whether or not you like it isn't up to me." He tossed the page to his brother and nodded. "Now, tell me where I'm going."Sam didn't say another word other than to give directions in forty-five minutes and Dean would have been smiling, but there wasn't anything to smile about. Finally, Sam told him to park the car along the sidewalk because the Styne's house was less than a block ahead and he wanted the element of surprise when it came to these men.They loaded up on weapons, knowing that they'd have to kill anyone that they came across because these fuckers could stitch each other back up and replace lost parts. In reality, he should have been afraid of what they might do. There was no way they would realistically walk into the Styne house and then come out of it unscathed, but he couldn't pass up the oppurtunity to crush Eldon Styne's throat underneath his boot."Man, I know you're - ""No, Sammy. I'm tired of people getting away with hurting the people I love." He twisted the silencer onto the barrel of his gun, feeling the press of cold metal in the hem - where he stashed his knives - of his jeans so he wasn't concentrating on the stretch of burned skin across his shoulder. "They're gonna pay. And they're gonna do it in blood.""Okay." He tossed the second silencer to Sam and pulled the lid of the trunk down, pausing to tuck his gun into the other side of his jeans.xXxThey had already taken down three outside, leaving them on the lawn instead of taking the time to drag them inside, but this was going to be tricky. There were three more just inside the door that they had taken care of, but not quickly enough that now they had five more standing around them.Dean fired once and dodged a shot, aiming at the one who fired second because he really didn't need a gunshot wound. He felt the slight sting of being sliced at with a knife after firing again, turning to find himself facing a man holding the angel blade he hadn't been able to find on Cas.He did a double take, freezing only long enough to realize exactly what the man was holding. Then, if you asked him, he blacked out completely and came to at his brother pulling at his shoulder. At that point, there wasn't much of a face left to look upon and the blade had changed ownership."Dean, we have to keep going." He was whispering and Dean felt numb, but watched the world move like a video game. People saw them, they killed them. It wasn't until the pair had made their way into the surgery room downstairs that he was truly aware of what he was doing again."Why, the Winchesters." He was an older man, covered from shoulders to knees by a lab coat he probably replaced more often than any of his body parts. "What a pleasant surprise."
"Still hung up about... what was his name?" This time it was a disinterested voice and coming from behind the white curtain separating the table Eldon Styne sat on and the door. Truly, if Dean were to answer that question, he would have told them that they weren't good enough to say his name.Instead, he quietly shot the older man and a nurse off to the side before he spoke. "Everyone upstairs is dead, too. If you wanna check, be my guest." He ushered toward the door and wondered idly in the back of his mind where Sam was. "I want to watch you look at the bodies of everyone you care about before I kill you."When he decided to rip back the curtain, Dean didn't expect the smirk on Styne's face or the words out of his mouth. "How long did it take your angel to die?" He didn't like being surprised... ever. Most of all, he hated being surprised in the moment before a fight because it prompted his stupid - stupid, stupid - decisions. The gun was across the room before he could process that, yes, he was the one to throw it.He pulled a knife from his jeans, sinking a few inches into his too confident fighting stance, watching Styne's moves. Standing in front of him drew the unwelcome memories back to the surface, pulling up stills and moving pictures of Cas happy and angry and everywhere in between. In truth, he was expecting to fail at the last moment because of this, but being pinned under Styne less than a moment after hearing those words filter through his mind again was something he couldn't have planned for.
I love you.
"I love you, too." Again, tears were forming unbidden in his eyes at the confession he could never say before Cas died, but now came too easily to be anything less than heartbreaking. Why was it so much easier just because Cas couldn't hear it?"What?" Sammy's voice came from his right, but he was too busy watching his vision shift in a way that should have been impossible. Black hair was forming on top of Styne's own, his eyes changing to that strangely deep blue."What?" This time it was Dean who asked the question, watching the room in the Stynes' basement melting away to reveal that he was standing in the passageway between the war room and the library. The tears were falling in torrents and his insides squeezed painfully at the form standing in front of him."Dean?" Honestly, he wasn't sure what exactly was happening, but felt his hands fist into the fabric of the trench coat he'd held for those months Cas had been gone before, pulling the angel closer than he'd been for a while - or, in Dean's mind, at least. "What's wrong?""Nothing... It's just - God, this looks so real." He shook a little, realizing he must be dead. "You even smell the same, man." Wow, good going ya creep."Why would I smell differently?" Dean could feel a hand lightly petting between his shoulder blades and Cas' head tilting in confusion."I don't know, it's Heaven." Dean pulled off, shrugging with a swipe at the tears running down his face because damn if he was going to cry like a baby in front of his best friend."You're not dead, Rocky." Three pairs of eyes moved to take in the archangel popping multicolored jellybeans into his mouth like a housewife straight from suburbia taking her noontime cocktail."What the hell are you doing here?" Dean was having a hard time understanding how two angels and his prodigy brother didn't know they were dead, much less why they all four would share the same Heaven. Especially Gabriel because he had never set feather nor foot inside the Bunker before. "And I watched two of you die, so I think I know where I'm at. Are they still there?""What are you talking about?" Sam's forehead had folded to look similar to the paper fans elementary school kids had invented for days when the air in the school wasn't working well enough to cool off its' students."The scars, Sammy. You've been looking at them for weeks." He reached to his collar feeling the absence of the physical mark. It saddened him a bit because he would miss having a physical imprint to expose the things he couldn't freely say himself. "Well, they were there. Every time you saw them you'd give me this look like you thought I was gonna impale myself on my knife or something.""How did you receive these scars, Dean?" One hand was pressing softly to his forehead and the other inspecting underneath the edge of his shirt, the source of those very same scars looking for them."We were hunting. You thought you were strong enough even though you gave up your Grace to heal Sammy..." He blushed and turned away from the chilly surface of Cas' fingers, surveying the room in its' usual state of disrepair. "But, it doesn't matter. They did a good job recreating this place.""I believe Gabriel has given you visions and this has confused you into mistaking fantasy with reality as well as reality with Heaven." It was Dean's turn to let his forehead crease in the confusion that followed someone else's words."Told you it's not Heaven." Another round of jellybeans made its' way into Gabriel's mouth and Dean was moving past the group. He was taking the stairs before he spit out a stupid excuse about going for a drive."Is that wise?" Dean didn't know if he could look back and not remember the one thing he wished he didn't imagine. So, he didn't look back."Does it matter?" The heavy door was open and shut before anyone answered the question and he was grateful. The last thing he needed for the rest of forever was to think about anything but just how much liquor he could ingest before midnight.xXxThe bottom of the bottle was the most beautiful and horrid thing. Beautiful because that small droplet of amber liquid he could never seem to get out would always swish around and catch the light, but horrid because it meant he didn't have any more alcohol to consume in case he started sobering up."Aw, sugarcakes. What's the sour face for?" The bartender was too interested in him tonight. Any other night, he would have relished in the attention his pretty face attracted. Tonight, he was inclined to point his gun at her head for a few seconds and tell her to bug off, but then the cops would get involved."It's the one I was born with." He hands the empty bottle back over the bar, huffing out a long sigh."What's her name, huh?" She pulls on the pour spout of the bottle, dislodging it as if she hadn't decided to launch into the unstable waters of Dean's love life."There is no her." He doesn't think about the words, finding the liquor-induced heat too interesting in contrast with the too friendly bartender. It was like he was being subjected to the heat of a blowdryer set on mild. Warm, but not too bad."No her? Didn't peg you for the guy that swings in both directions." She throws away the glass bottle and sets her hands along the bar. "So, why are you here at two in the afternoon? You're pretty enough to get just about anything.""Yeah, well, not this time." Dean can't help that he sounds a little bummed by the thought of not having Cas that way. He's been dealing with it since the stupid guy drug him out of the dirt."Does he bat for the other team?" Her hands search out a beer and slide it down the bar a ways, settling in front of a man who looks like he hasn't slept in three days. To be fair, he probably doesn't look too great himself."No, he doesn't bat for any team." He scratches an imaginary itch on his scalp, thinking of bringing him into the brothel when they believed he would die. "That I know of.""That you know of?" She sounds skeptical and leans away from the bar, her hands crossing in a way that reminds him too much of Jo to not make the connection in his brain. "Maybe you're here because you're looking for something you've already got, sugar.""No." He shakes his head, feeling the slight vertigo the liquor provides when you move too quickly clench in his abdomen. "Not possible.""Really?" She pauses again, an eyebrow raising. She shifts her weight on her feet and smirks through her obviously rhetorical questions. "He never gets real close and looks at your lips? He never gives you those long glances across the room that make you wanna shiver? He never knows exactly when you need a hug or touch... even when you don't know?"He grunts and lays his head down, closing his eyes to shut out the spinning feeling he knows is the result of having almost the whole fifth to himself. And, in the end, it's the nice bartender too invested in his life that he hears calling someone Sammy and promising to make sure he isn't taken for his pretty face.xXxWaking up on the floor wasn't something Dean expected and it scares him. He's afraid that he's woken from some kind of stupid nap and it'll have been a dream and he totally ruined it."Cas?" He can hear muffled speak, but it only sounds like it's coming from one person so he can't tell if it's Sam talking to another Hunter over the phone or... He couldn't control the sinking feeling in his chest when he realizes that he could have lost Cas again, even if it was just a stupid dream. "Cas!""Dean, I'm right here. Is there something wrong?" His hand was resting on Dean's forehead, a crinkle between between his dark brows as he felt the averagely tempered skin."Not much..." Dean tried to find the words to tell Cas what he meant, but instead found that he couldn't remember leaning in as well as he could remember the look in the angel's eyes when their lips met for a quick peck. Shock preceded pleasure preceded confusion."About damn time, you know." Gabriel was leaning against the other wall, smirking triumphantly at the moment. "I thought I was going to have to abduct him again.""Gabriel, I swear to your father!" Dean was surprised by Sam's tone, though he was sure that his little brother couldn't actually hear them through the dense walls of the Bunker, he was just angry. "I will make you regret it if you don't stop!""Listen to your little brother, bringing that dominance outside of the bedroom like that." Dean could have gagged at what the wink Gabriel gave them implied, but decided to stop thinking about what it could mean because he had drank his body weight in whiskey the night before. "So naughty. Toodles."xXxWeeks passed, then months. Dean never asked for the Mark - nor accepted it, when offered. Hunting slowed and hiding was no longer an issue when the Winchesters took down Metatron, the domestics of their home life looked to be going up. Really, he was happy most of the time. This particular moment was included in most of the time."So, you never really told me what happened." Cas was eating a strawberry, so the words were a bit garbled but Dean could make them out well enough."What do you mean? When?" Dean couldn't pull an isolated incident he wouldn't share with Cas, but also couldn't follow where the former angel's mind could have gone in the minutes between their last conversation. Which, of course, had been about the significance of healthy foods bought for the Bunker."In the visions Gabriel gave you. You never told me what happened in them." He'd swallowed and was tilting his head up, blue eyes staring straight through to Dean's soul as f he could still see it. "I know it was painful for you because you sometimes look as if you're waiting to wake up from a dream.""Yeah, sometimes I am." Dean lets the hand resting against Cas' back feel across the soft t-shirt that would always be too big for his narrow shoulders. "It was a really bad one, but I'm gonna tell you because I don't believe in keeping shit in anymore, okay?""Okay." Those blue eyes are serious and unwavering, the lips situated underneath them closing until he was needed back in the conversation. Dean had seen this look a million times before and recognized it. He would listen to every word until he knew the monologue was over."It started off as a simple thing. I got the Mark of Cain because I didn't think we would be strong enough alone to defeat everyone coming at us."Ignoring the surprise in the man's eyes, he plowed on through the story. "It was easy at first. I could kill anything and anyone that tried to take us, but it got the best of me."I was angrier, would lash out at you and Sam sometimes if there hadn't been a hunt in too long. I turned into a demon. I almost killed Sam, but you were there to stop me and you both cred me. After, the both of you and Charlie stole the Book of the Damned from this family... The Stynes." Dean could feel his anger rise at the thought of Eldon Styne and those last words he'd heard a million different ways, but could never remember as loudly as he did then."You were all just trying to cure me and... died for it. We came in just as you were dying and I tried to save you the human way, you know, tried to apply pressure to the wound and hope for the best. I guess I didn't realize that I learned even angels without their Grace leave the burns, too, but I learned it the hard way." Dean pulled the smaller man close, looking up to the deceptively blue sky. "The last thing you said was that you loved me."There was a pregnant pause between the two of them before Dean could continue, his hand still making small trips across Cas' back. "It just all seems so real because it's so terrible, you know. Once, I said that all the Winchesters were cursed. I believe it.""You should." Dean's eyes were brought down to behold the wrong person coiling up against his chest. The absolute last person he had ever thought he'd see again was staring into his eyes, the peaceful background slowly giving way to expose the depths of Hell surrounding him. "Because the Winchesters are cursed, Squirrel." Scratch that, not the person, the wrong species was pressing against the shirt Cas had just laid his hands across, the inky smoke seeming to grin manically in Dean's face. He felt the swirling confusion take over his mind, making him dizzy in an otherworldly way - this shouldn't have surprised him, considering he didn't truly have a body anymore to feel physically dizzy. But, it was this whirlpool of confusion that snapped the last straw in Dean's mind. If he was doomed to spend eternity in Hell, he planned to do it as painlessly as he could. Dean Winchester quickly became legendary among the demons as well as the angels, whispers of his love-story-gone-wrong traveling by word of mouth to become something of a fairy tale. The only thing that never changed, that Dean himself made sure would never change, was the last line.
Heaven recruited their soldier and Hell their son so that, even in death, love lost.